What would be the reason for the low infection rate of toddlers, let alone mortality rate? Is that more due to the social factors of passing the virus on rather than any biological factors?
Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!
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I'm not going to suggest I know much about this, but a colleague who does have a comprehensive knowledge said men are far more likely to be 'diagnosed'.
His 'suggestion' was that the contamination rate probably was pretty equal across all demographics, however certain show more common/identifiable symptoms.
Children are probably getting it, but simply aren't showing the symptoms due to milder cases or because it's easily confused with other ailments etc.
That doesn't explain why men are dying more, but their diagnosis rate probably is due to this.
I think my concern lies in folks not taking it seriously if it happens in their area because it is "just the flu". Would they quarantine themselves or family? I can see that being an issue in the US - between inability to afford to miss work, "super patriots" and their individuals rights/big gov't crap, and the generally ignorant.
Look at the severe measures China and now other countries have taken. That is what has limited the number of deaths (and yes modern medicine compared to infectious diseases of the past). I am not sure how that would go over in the US for "just the flu"
If we could go back in time and somehow prevent the flu becoming endemic wouldn't we want to do that given how many people die from it every year.
That's potentially where we are now with this virus.
I would probably isolate myself if i had the flu as best i could in all honesty, but then someone on a zero hour contract in a gig economy recieving no compensation might feel different. The level of nonsense coming out the US government seems geared more to the stock market rather than the publics welfare which must be frustrating. Hopefully medical people are given the support they will need over policy in the coming months.
sdk
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Good thing America's the home of the brave.
www.forbes.com
Health Secretary Alex Azar Refuses To Guarantee Coronavirus Vaccine Would Be Affordable For All
The Trump administration is facing questions over how it plans to fight Covid-19, after initially sending mixed messages.
www.forbes.com
sdk
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Also, good thing that Vice President Pence has been put in charge of the US effort to combat the disease. In collaboration with Franklin Graham and Joel Osteen, he's busy developing an ambitious new prayer treatment.
But they can't do it alone.
Won't you help?
Please send in your contribution today.
But they can't do it alone.
Won't you help?
Please send in your contribution today.
This is data-geeks heaven. Seems a reasonable/responsible site too. It does cite all sources of data with a link and they are reliable sources - WHO, CDC, NHS, etc.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Toast
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Totally agree about the zero hours.
I just assume I'm going to catch this and be off work for a bit and hopefully recover so that i won't be skint.
The schools closing is also inevitable and then childcare becomes an issue for loads of families.
I can say now that the shop I work in has long sold out of hand gels and anti bac wipes as people are panic buying them. I think buying flu medicines would be wiser to deal with it when you get it, rather than try to keep it at bay.
Prevention is ALWAYS better than treatment.
Whole other discussion, but beyond pain/fever reducers, most cold and flu meds aren't helpful and are potentially harmful in younger kids.
Yeah, have seen a lot of that "well it only affects old people" sentiment, mostly said with a completely straight face. I worked a large part of my life in medical and care of the elderly wards and this must be terrifying for them, irrespective of the huge costs and stress it would place on an already overstretched industry. Not sure how people can be so casually dismissive
For me it's purely from looking at it as a potential doomsday scenario. With that in mind, an illness that almost exclusively kills the elderly isn't an existential threat to humanity.
I don't mean to be dismissive when I say that, only factual.
bullybeef
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Am I the only one beginning to smell a rat with Iran’s involvement in all this.
They currently have a death rate of 10% compared to 1-2% elsewhere. The thought process is that there have been many more (undiagnosed) cases in Iran than we know about.
Why is Iran being hit so hard?
They currently have a death rate of 10% compared to 1-2% elsewhere. The thought process is that there have been many more (undiagnosed) cases in Iran than we know about.
Why is Iran being hit so hard?
Obviously (besides a few nuts spouting nonsense out there) this isn't an extinction level or doomsday event or even near that. I am certainly not meaning to promote that.
But it could be a big problem for health systems if taken lightly...and by that I mean treat it like the flu where people don't self isolate, etc. We honestly don't have the capacity if people were to ignore quarantines.
This is as "mild" a global event as it is because so far countries have quarantined aggressively which we do not do during flu outbreaks.
*hopes this isn't more bait
tsubaki
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Possibly it’s down to how they are counting patients - though underreporting patients (but not deaths) is also a possibility, or their outbreak starting in a particularly at risk community, or a combination of all those.
It was a bit of a weird place for their outbreak to start, though.
davek
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I think the piece in the New Statesman this week by Srecko Horvat ('Why the coronavirus presents a global political danger'), is a good one to read right now. It concerns the political-economy of this virus - and, in particular, the way it'll possibly be utilised and exploited by corporations and the governments they work for to buttress neo-liberalism.
The relevant paragraphs:
"In Illness as Metaphor (1978), Susan Sontag challenges the victim-blaming language often used to describe diseases and those who suffer from them. Four decades on, illnesses are still being discussed in simplistic and symbolic terms; coronavirus is being used as a metaphor to express all sorts of fears, including, as seen in Der Spiegel and the Economist, over China’s dominant position in the global economy. Both magazine covers represent a dread of the economic danger that the virus poses to capitalism itself – that is, to the production of goods, from iPhones to Tesla cars.
Coronavirus has a significant bearing on the economy, particularly tourism and factory production. But it won’t lead to the collapse of neoliberalism – the dominant ideology of the past four decades – the central tenet of which is about insulating the market economy from democratic forces.
As the French philosopher Michel Foucault argued in his lectures on “Security, territory and population” and the “Birth of Biopolitics” at the Collège de France in the 1970s, neoliberalism operates through a new form of governing that is concerned with the “biopolitical control” of populations. This, achieved through the “technologies of control” such as health care and punishment, can lead to what Foucault called “state racism” and the racism of “permanent purification”.
This idea was recently returned to by Quinn Slobodian, the Canadian historian and author of Globalists. Writing in the New York Times in 2018, Slobodian argued that the far right strives to entrench an “alter-globalisation” based on anti-immigration; one where “goods and money will remain free, but people won’t”.
The point is that despite a 12 per cent decrease in global smartphone production in the first quarter of 2020, the slowing of international car production and the temporary closure of Foxconn’s factories in southern China (which manufacture the iPhone), coronavirus is not so much a danger to the neoliberal economy as it is an agent to create the perfect environment for the ideology.
This is the political danger of coronavirus: a global health crisis that suits both the ethno-nationalist goal of fortified borders and racial exclusivity, and the aim of ending the free movement of peoples (especially those from developing nations) but ensuring that the flow of goods and capital remains unchecked.
At present, the rising pandemic of fear is more dangerous than the virus itself. The apocalyptic imagery in the media hides the deepening relationship between the far-right and the capitalist economy. And in the same way that a virus needs a living cell to replicate, so will capitalism adapt to the new biopolitics of the 21st century.
Coronavirus has already impacted on the global economy, but it won’t stop the never-ending circulation and accumulation of capital. If anything, we might soon be facing a darker, and even more dangerous form of capitalism, one that relies on the stronger control and purification of populations."
The relevant paragraphs:
"In Illness as Metaphor (1978), Susan Sontag challenges the victim-blaming language often used to describe diseases and those who suffer from them. Four decades on, illnesses are still being discussed in simplistic and symbolic terms; coronavirus is being used as a metaphor to express all sorts of fears, including, as seen in Der Spiegel and the Economist, over China’s dominant position in the global economy. Both magazine covers represent a dread of the economic danger that the virus poses to capitalism itself – that is, to the production of goods, from iPhones to Tesla cars.
Coronavirus has a significant bearing on the economy, particularly tourism and factory production. But it won’t lead to the collapse of neoliberalism – the dominant ideology of the past four decades – the central tenet of which is about insulating the market economy from democratic forces.
As the French philosopher Michel Foucault argued in his lectures on “Security, territory and population” and the “Birth of Biopolitics” at the Collège de France in the 1970s, neoliberalism operates through a new form of governing that is concerned with the “biopolitical control” of populations. This, achieved through the “technologies of control” such as health care and punishment, can lead to what Foucault called “state racism” and the racism of “permanent purification”.
This idea was recently returned to by Quinn Slobodian, the Canadian historian and author of Globalists. Writing in the New York Times in 2018, Slobodian argued that the far right strives to entrench an “alter-globalisation” based on anti-immigration; one where “goods and money will remain free, but people won’t”.
The point is that despite a 12 per cent decrease in global smartphone production in the first quarter of 2020, the slowing of international car production and the temporary closure of Foxconn’s factories in southern China (which manufacture the iPhone), coronavirus is not so much a danger to the neoliberal economy as it is an agent to create the perfect environment for the ideology.
This is the political danger of coronavirus: a global health crisis that suits both the ethno-nationalist goal of fortified borders and racial exclusivity, and the aim of ending the free movement of peoples (especially those from developing nations) but ensuring that the flow of goods and capital remains unchecked.
At present, the rising pandemic of fear is more dangerous than the virus itself. The apocalyptic imagery in the media hides the deepening relationship between the far-right and the capitalist economy. And in the same way that a virus needs a living cell to replicate, so will capitalism adapt to the new biopolitics of the 21st century.
Coronavirus has already impacted on the global economy, but it won’t stop the never-ending circulation and accumulation of capital. If anything, we might soon be facing a darker, and even more dangerous form of capitalism, one that relies on the stronger control and purification of populations."
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